


Chapters of Claudia

by Eternal Scribe (Shadowcat)



Category: Primeval
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-02-06
Updated: 2013-02-06
Packaged: 2017-11-28 10:50:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/673565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadowcat/pseuds/Eternal%20Scribe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The sharp knife of a short life doesn't always have only one chapter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chapters of Claudia

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt of "undeserved reputation" for my amnesty card at [HC_Bingo](http://hc-bingo.dreamwidth.org/)

For many years as she rose in the ranks at the Home Office, Claudia Brown had earned the undeserved reputation of being cold and unattached. She didn’t socialize much with her co-workers and she didn’t have any suitors that sent embarrassing gifts to her at the office like so many of the other girls did. She was solitary and seemed to be focused only on whatever job she was doing at the time.

Unbeknownst to most of her co-workers, Claudia _did_ date on occasion and she was even currently engaged. As she had commented to busy bodies more than once, she was not the kind of person to discuss her personal life at work. The two places were separate and she didn’t see any reason to be gossiping with anyone about their supposed wild weekends or what she and her fiancé had spent their weekend doing.

There was a place for gossip and the office was not that place.

Besides, talking about your personal life with a bunch of people you had nothing in common with outside of work seemed to be in very poor taste in Claudia’s informed opinion. These were people that she was in active competition with for higher salaries and better assignments. Why would she give them any kind of personal information that some enterprising little skirt could use against her?

She had learned far too much about those kinds of tactics when she was studying law at the university. If someone wanted what you had – especially as a woman – they would use any information that they had against you. It didn’t matter if they were friends of yours or not. Women, it seemed, would use any weapon they could on a supposed rival. One day you were their friend and the next day, you had something that they wanted.

When she joined the Civil Service, she was determined that she wasn’t going to make that same mistake again because now the stakes were even higher. Business stayed business and personal life stayed personal. There was a reason, after all, that it was called “a personal life”.

She became engaged shortly after being transferred to the Ministry of Science Technology. Jeremy was a handsome man, if a trifle dull and impossibly old-fashioned. He loved her and she thought she loved him. Or maybe she did love him but not enough. She had no real interest in planning out the wedding and didn’t care where they would be going on their honeymoon.

It should have told her something that she was far more interested in the work she was doing for the Home Office than how her wedding was going to come about. She spent far more time at work during the week than she did with her fiancé. There was always something that needed her attention; something that required her to stay later and later at work and break more and more dates with Jeremy.

It was a month before the wedding date when Claudia realized that she just couldn’t go through with the wedding. Nice or not, Jeremy was not the man that she could see herself spending the rest of her life with. He never got annoyed with her, never picked an argument – even she ended up standing him up without a call time after time due to work. He always brushed off her apologies and never seemed to get put out with her over anything.

There was no challenge to the relationship; no wondering about the unknown. Jeremy was someone you could take at face value and Claudia knew that she was not the kind of woman that could be a wife to him. He was old-fashioned, which meant that even though he hadn’t said anything about it, yet, he would probably make the suggestion that she give up her career to be a proper kind of society wife after the wedding.

She loved her work more than she loved her fiancé and she knew that was a real problem.

Her fiancé was a nice man and he deserved someone better for him than she believed she could be at that point in time.

After making sure that she left the office at a regular sort of time, Claudia gathered her bearings and made her way to Jeremy’s house. There was no use in putting off the inevitable any longer. It was better that she did the right thing before they ended up in an unhappy marriage.

He knew something was changed when he saw her at the door.

“Well, then. You’re here at a point that is before nine o’clock and you’re not smiling. This can’t be all that good for me, I don’t imagine.”

It might have been heartbreaking if she hadn’t been so sure that she was doing the right thing.

“Jeremy,” she began. “We need to talk…”

Later, in her car outside of his house, she was surprised to find that she was crying. Even though the parting had been in the best interests of the both of them, it still hurt. It took her some time to calm down enough to be able to drive.

Doing the right thing could cut almost as deeply as doing nothing at all.

She comforted herself the way she always had in the past: she buried herself in her work. The main difference was that this time when she heard the rumors, she had to fight not to lash out at the people who were circulating them. The perceived slur against her character was undeserved even more so than it had been before. These people didn’t know her and didn’t know what she might have been through in her life. They had no right judging her or assigning labels blindly to what they did see of her during a short window of opportunity during the day.

She tried to push that old hurt away from her, but it wasn’t easy when people found out that she single again and wanted to commiserate with her and ask a lot of questions that she didn’t have answers for.

She was never happier about a promotion than she was when she was made the head on one of the special projects that was overseen by the Ministry of Science.


End file.
